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Soviet Moon Rocket
TestBoy writes "There is a decent article about the Soviet Union's moon rocket and why it was doomed to fail. From one of the pictures on the website, you realize how large just one of its multiple engines were."
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Size doesn't matter, it's how you use it. I get told that all the time, so it must be true.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
Wow, helluva barbeque opportunity missed there...
I don't know why they had so much trouble getting the thing to work. This isn't rocket sci.... oh. Never mind.
From the University of Texas website:
N-1 Stages
30 NK-33 LOX/kerosene engines; 10.1 million lb. total thrust.
8 NK-43 LOX/kerosene engines; 3.1 million lb. total thrust.
4 NK-39 engines; 360,800 lb. total thrust.
1 NK-31 engine; 90,200 lb. thrust; trans-lunar boost stage.
1 engine; 19,200 lb. thrust; lunar orbit insertion & initial lunar descent stage.
Why didn't they use fewer, but more powerful engines? Was it a matter of money, or engineering?
The American Saturn V booster uses liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
Liquid hydrogen is much more efficient in terms of energy/unit weight than kerosene.
It's cleaner burning, as well.
If you don't believe me, ask that guy over there.
Wow. That's a pretty big rocket engine. It makes you wonder if the engineers who designed it were compensating for something..
An obvious joke, I know, but SOMEBODY had to make it!
From the article:
In 1997, 94 leftover N1 engines were sold to the American company Kistler for refurbishment and incorporation into a new rocket.
So what did Kristler do with them?
t'nera semordnilap
..It is kind of depressing to ponder the rise and fall of the soviet space exploration empire. Crippled by the fall of communism, and lack of money, a once great competitor to NASA is now a laughing stock.
Now a point to ponder, how long will it be before NASA becomes a laughing stock. Countless articles continually point out that NASA cant get proper funding, etc etc.
The sad thing is, if only Russia's space agency could of survived after the berlin wall came down, we would probably still have a thriving space race and maybe even more public interest.
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
It said a few still exist in working order. They should update them so they don't blow up (i.e. no 'catastrophic failure') and use them as payload rockets to launch unmanned supplies to, and pieces of, the international space station. Since they are already built, it will save quite a bit of money instead of the space shuttle doing most of the work. As it is, the space shuttle has been forced way beyond its original retirement date.
(okay, so I just wanted to try out my new .sig . . .)
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
after WWII the US got the better German V2 rocket scientists like Wernher Von Braun, instead of the USSR? Certainly the US didn't have the will to fully use their experience and talents, however, untill after Sputnik.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Here's a link to some cool drawings of the N1's. Of course, these drawings mean nothing. My theory is that the Soviet moon mission was as faked as the US one. Here's photographic proof that the N1's were only about 15 ft tall! Seeing is believing. You do believe me, don't you?
Everything you've ever wanted to know about the Saturn V.
I want to see a junkyard wars where they try to build a manned rocket. No, really, I do!
"Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
Check out this site for a detailed history of the Soviet N1 development effort.
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
I recently saw a program on the Discovery Channel called "Cosmodrome" which covered this really well. They didn't reach the moon before the americans did, but the closed-cycle NK-33 rocket engines built for the Soviet moon programme (scrapped in 1974) beat all other rocket engines hands down when they were brought out from storage and tested by an american company in the mid-'90s...
:)
Apparently, american rocket scientists had earlier claimed that closed-cycle rocket engines were "impossible". But when has that ever stopped the russians from trying?
They did blow up about 5 of their moon rockets before the moon programme was stopped though
From one of the pictures on the website, you realize how large just one of its multiple engines were
The photo shows the base of the N1, inside which were housed 30 smaller motors. The Soviet philosophy for building large rocket boosters was to take existing stuff that worked and cluster them together, rather than to invent whole new, larger motors as the US did. This worked well - up to a point, as they discovered with the N1. Even today, most Russian space boosters are variations on the old Vostok booster that put Sputnik and Gagarin into orbit in the early 60's. The US tends to invent whole new technologies but even today tried-and-true designs from the early part of the Cold War are still in widespread use: American Atlas and Titan boosters originated as missiles and the Delta booster has been around forever.
Rocketboy
When things go BOOM, this is technically not a good thing.
Here is a summary of the Russian lunar launches. Here is the data from 1969
Jan. 20, 1969 7K-L1/ 13L - Circumlunar UR-500 Launch failure
Feb. 19, 1969 E-8 - Lunar rover 8K82K (UR-500) Failed to reach orbit
Feb. 21, 1969 7K-L1S - Circumlunar N-1 / L3 Exploded during launch
June 14, 1969 E-8-5 #402 - Sample return UR-500 Failed to reach orbit
July 3, 1969 7K-L1S - Circumlunar N-1 / 5L Exploded at launch
July 13, 1969 E-8-5 Luna-15 Sample return UR-500 Crashed on lunar surface
Aug. 8, 1969 7K-L1 Zond-7 Circumlunar UR-500 Flew around the Moon
Sept. 23, 1969 E-8-5 Cosmos-300 Sample return UR-500 Failed to leave Earth orbit
Oct. 22, 1969 E-8-5 Cosmos-305 Sample return UR-500 Failed to leave Earth orbit
Give them points for effort.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
You must be a "nice guy" as well.
A few years back, PBS ran a series named the "Red Files", and Episode 3 dealt with the Soviet's Korolev Lunar Lander.
If I recall correctly, they interviewed a NASA engineer who was able to take a tour of the lunar lander and compared it to a "flying garbage can". It really was awful, there were analog gauges and whatnot littering the interior - basically one step shy of having Cosmonauts just jump out of the orbiter and hope for the best!
I'm a 2000 man.
Although they lost interest in landing on the moon after Apollo 11, along with the N-1 failure, but they still managed to land the first automated rovers I saw a backup Lunokhod 2 rover last weekend. it looked like a tractor, but was still pretty impressive for early 1970's technology.
If your point is that the Soviet space program was, on the whole, a success not a failure, I completely agree. Their space programs was one of the few things the Communist world could be truly proud of.
-Miko
Miko O'Sullivan
Here ya go (For those who like BluePrints more than cute pics)
http://members.aol.com/Satrnpress/samprotw.htm
MessEdUp
#/var/www/v
As far as I know - robotic mission to the moon was complete success though. It is interesting to observe mass media in the West time after time to concentrate on areas where US were ahead and never opposite. Venus landing of a robotic craft and photographs from the surface is an example of another success of soviet space programm and I am sure there are many others not well known in the West.
... what have we done recently that's so hot? Shuttle launches still cost a billion bucks a pop (yeah, we're always learning how to save money on the next generation), and all we do is either dick around in low earth orbit or lob probes out.
Maybe I just OD'd on space opera, but to me "space exploration" means letting real people go out there and take real risks, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.
One of those little throwaway comments that stuck in my mind was Buzz Aldrin commenting that we're in for a shock when (if) we do try and go back to the moon, because we're going to find out just how hard it was. Sure, we know how to do it, but do we still have the knowhow?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The moon rocket was actualy made by these people and stolen by the soviets.
Hacker Media
That picture was just of the skirt at the base of the rocket. The individual engines were tiny, just like the ones used for the Proton booster.
Mark Wade's site has more information on the N1.
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
Listen the Americans beat the USSR in the race to get to the moon but that is absolutely it.
_ __
They got:
1st satellite.
1st man in orbit.
1st woman in orbit.
1st lunar rover.
1st space station.
1st long term space station.
The US my country that I love so well got to the moon first.
The Soviet's took us down in every other first. It terms of keeping people in space for long periods of time they had it down while we had lost interest after seeing some guys hope around on the moon.
_______________________________________________
ACK
In short, it was a tortoise and hare race. In terms of the space race, the US took a nap after WWII and the USSR got to work. Once the hare woke up it was just a question of how much of a head start the hare had. For the moon race, it wasn't enough of a head start.
Still, don't think I'm disrepecting the USSR space effort. They did great things and I hope Russians today are proud when they think of the Soviet space program.
-Miko
Miko O'Sullivan
Wow, you make it sound as though USSR had no successfull lunar missions at all. Here is a link to the NASA web page with details on the USSR lunar missions: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/lunarus sr.html
My favorites are the Lunokhod missions:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/tmp/1970-095A.html
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/tmp/1973-001A.html
And a few other cool looking unmanned landers:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/tmp/1976-081A.html
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/tmp/1970-072A.html
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/tmp/1966-006A.html
Apparently the Soviets could not afford to develop a few powerful engines (AKA the Saturn V).
Instead they decided to use lots of cheap(er) engines, for their time these engines were revolutionary (something to do with the way the fuel and oxygen were mixed). After the break up of the soviet union some of these engines were takn to the US and tested. It turns out they out performed modern NASA Equivalents.
As for the explosions that they had during launch. Apparently this was a part of test program with each test ironing out the bugs in the system. For example one of the launches was wrecked by debris getting into the engines.
Apparently they reckoned that they would need 11 launches before they got everything ironed out.
I call these guys real engineers, if you have limitless funds like NASA did in those days you could do almost anything. But to do things on a tight budget and limited resources takes brains
Now that you've read all the posts about how the Russian space program is done, read this Wired article (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/rd-180.ht ml) that describes how US companies are launching their payloads using Russian propulsion.
Here's a quote: "They build the thing and test the shit out of it. This engine cost $10 million and produces almost 1 million pounds of thrust. You can't do that with an American-made engine."
Clearly, the Soviet space program was hamstrung by the fact that during the cold war, magnetic north was in the territory of the west. Without free access to the actual magnetic North Pole (though Lech Walesa was a pretty magnetic Pole), they obviously had a hard time navigating, as their most sophisticated navigational equipment (besides the sextant) was a souvenir compass obtained from an East German high school science fair.
Too bad they don't have the budget to pursue the moon again now that magnetic north will actually be in their own territory. They would have a distinct advantage over Nasa if they could make Nasa pay for access to magnetic north, maybe on a subscription basis or using micropayments.
All this rocket stuff is so confusing!
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
Yuri Gagarin died in a plane crash on March 27, 1968, over a year before Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, or a secret TV studio if you believe the above...
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
All this money wasted on these rockets brings to mind the book
The Ghost of the Executed Engineer is a great history as told by a Soviet engineer of a number of different massive engineering failures that occurred under central planning. I.E The Building of the white sea canal in which 200,000 people died and the resulting canal was much less usefull than the railroad that was proposed by engineers before the commencement of construction that would have cost less to build in terms of lives and capital.
BTW, the greatest technological failure of all time was a series of dam collapes in China in 1975 that caused the deaths of more than 85,000 people and as many as 200,000 if you count the resulting disease epidemics set off.. Story here. Which is why everyone has been so warry of the Three Gorges Dam project.
Why has no-one been to the moon since 1972? For those who cant count, that's 30 years. There are not even plans to go back even though we've (debatably) found ice up there (perfect for a settlement). I guess the next people to go will be from the private sector. Seems like a long way out though.
How we know is more important than what we know.
-Miko
Miko O'Sullivan
Hey, in the U.S. at least, half a bill is $50.00. In American, you say half a bil. If, however, you're talking in British, you need to say half a milliard.
Virg
It was called "Salvage 1" - - don't bother.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
It even goes back to the war when Russia would test prototype fighters in the field on the front.
Yes. It's a picture of a model rocket based on the N1, and those are late model US trucks, and the locale is in the USA. I bet that ladder even came from Sears. I thought it was cool enough to mention, posed as a joke. My hat's off to the one guy who actually suspected I might be kidding.
Well, not in 1969. I note from your links that the successful ones were 1 in 1966, 2 in 1970, 1 in 1973, 1 in 1976.
I just didn't feel like posting the complete list, which you can see in the original link I provided.
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft_planetar y_lunar.html
has a comprehensive list.
out of 59 launches from 1958 to 1976, there were apparently 18 successful missions.
1969 was a really bad year.
over all, looks like about half (?) exploded or never left earth orbit, etc. or otherwise had other problems. Since the original post nattered about a mission about the time of the first American Moon landing (1969) quoting the stats from 1969 seemed relevant.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Well, the N-1 was supposed to be a Moon-shot rocket, and this is a story about the N-1, so discussing our success in that particular regard seems appropriate. You are, however, missing a few points, most importantly (to my way of thinking) exploration of the outer planets. Although there is much to be proud of in the Russian space heritage, there are also many "firsts" in the U.S. program.
Virg
After all, when your country strands you on the moon and has no way of getting you back down, of course you will need tons of room for all the supplies.
:)
Damn...that must have been one huge beast if that just held all the rockets.
Wonder what Steve Buscemi's Armageddon character would have to say about that
Although I must applaud the "rivalry" between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union during the Space Race (because had their been no race it's doubtful the moon shot would've ever taken place due to costs, risks, etc.), wouldn't it be nice if we could move beyond "We did it first" and the countering "No, WE did it first" type of comments. Imagine something like:
Human Race:
1st satellite
1st human in orbit
1st moon landing
1st Mars probe
etc.
to be followed by:
1st permanent Lunar colony
1st manned mission to Mars
1st permanent Mars colony
1st manned mission to Europa
1st asteroidal mining colony
1st Mercury-based solar powered antimatter generation facility (for antimatter-powered thrusters).
Sadly, even though I'm 29, it's higly doubtful I'll see more than a token manned mission to Mars in my lifetime. My children will see my grandparents's dreams come true, albeit about 80 years too late.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"Challenger" did not have such system. So who is careing about the crew safety more?
As far as the quality goes - high tech does not always equals quality - more often the opposite is true. Why would you think American were so keen on getting russian to build the central life support module of the ISS? Cared enough, to tolerate financing caused delays, and pay big bucks for the expertise. Guess NASA does not care for lifesupport system for its astranaughts on ISS? Quite the contrary - they wanted the proven, quality system for this.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
The attentive reader will note that the Saturn V also used kerosine. It produces more pounds of thrust than does liquid H2.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
Like all the times they beat us in the space race. Satelites. Probes. Rovers. Etc.
Ask the Nazis what they thought of Soviet central planning. It did not seem to matter that the Red Army lost personnel and material in quantities that would have decimated any other form of government. The will to fight came from a very stubborn center. The /entire/ /country/ was doing nothing but producing weapons scientists, weapons factories, and soldiers. After Germany lost their first campaign, it was all over. The Soviets produced effective tanks and planes with single-minded dedication in quantities Germany could never hope to match.
Centralized planning can be very good for a small number of projects that need to be rushed.
Lies about crimes
First spacewalk, although it nearly ended in disaster because the spacesuit was pretty primitive and, seriously limited Leonov's movements.
First near rendezvour - but this was only a publicity stunt. No real orbital maneouvers were performed, just timed launching of two spaceships to the same orbit.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
It's a question of where you introduce the simplicity and complexity.
Having built simple and effective rocket engines they tried to bundle them together to make a huge rocket.
That created complexity.
The Americans built more complex gimballed rocket engines, which allowed them to build a simpler overall rocket (Saturn V) with fewer engines.
So the russians created complexity by combining many simple components
Where the americans had a simpler design of more complex components.
I think the moral is that elegance and efficiency of design is important throughout any significant engineering project.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
At least they made it to Solaris!
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
The same basic considerations are why the jet engines used in the very successful Su-27 class fighters are more fuel-thirsty for the same thrust as an F-15 class fighter (the two are roughly equivalent). The hotter you can get, the more expansion you can get. If you don't have the expansion, the only way to get the same thrust is to pour more fuel into the nozzle. The Russian designers are confident that their newest engines for the Su-30 class follow-ons to the Su-27 are every bit as good as current Western engines -- but they have not had the money to actually build the things.
There is also, of course, the Russian tendency to improve existing designs rather than embark upon all-new designs. For example, the next-generation Russian air superiority fighter, the Su-34/Su-35, is basically an Su-27 improved with the latest in materials to decrease weight, increase strength, and improve payload and maneuverability (not to mention better engines). The Su-34/Su-35 aren't going to be built because Russia cannot afford them, but show what Russian designers prefer to do rather than embark upon all-new aircraft like the U.S. designers like to do. The N-1 engines were similar in design to other engines used by the Soviets, and thus preferable, in the eyes of Russian designers, to all-new (risky) engine designs.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Yep. I agree. And BTW... I am probably about the same age (graduated high school 1965).
The only good weather is bad weather.
The cold war is over there is no need to keep repeating the bs propaganda stories.
The US was never asleep on in the space race. After ww2 they brought in all the nazi rocket scientists they could get their hands on (as did the russians).
The US was working hard on a satelite while the russians were working on sputnik. But as opposed to Sputnik it was meant to be a secret venture - the satelite was supposed to be a spy satelite.
So no the americans did not start late.
IIRC correctly the Soviets lost a total of four cosmonauts in flight (all after re-entry) and, it appears, one on the ground in an oxygen fire similar to Apollo 1 but much earlier. (There are urban myths about cosmonauts stranded in space that are comprehensively demolished on Mark Wade's site). Note that the Zond spacecraft *could* have carried two cosmonauts around the moon before Apollo 8, but the vehicle was judged insufficiently reliable to risk cosmonauts in at that stage.
Meanwhile the US lost three astronauts on the ground in Apollo 1. As for flight, how many Americans were lost when the Challenger blew up? Can you say "NASA = Need Another Seven Astronauts?". How good an example of caring about quality and safety was that launch? (done for PR reasons over the vehement protests of the engineers).
AFAICC that makes the Russian safety record better...
Interesting to see how the Chinese appear to be hastening slowly with their manned program, to make sure it is safe and successful rather than reaching an arbitrary target date.
1)send an unmanned craft into space.
2)send a manned craft into space.
America loves to hype up the moon landings and how they won the space race, but to me the Soviets had it won when Yuri Gagarin was launched. The later stuff, while difficult, was just exploring, the Soviets opened up the space. Who's more important: the Wright Brothers or the guy who first crossed the Atlantic?
So if NASA is so wonderful IRG the shuttle, why did they destroy ALL of the plans to the Saturn V? And yes, congress is no better. But, NASA is not just an R&D organization, it is a government bureaucracy. That means it has a big interest in justifying itself to the public, it has a big PR operation, and it works very hard at justifying itself. If you don't think government agencies have to justify themselves in order to get funding, you are extremely naive. And if you don't think that doesn't skew their behavior, often is screwy ways, you are also naive. After all, the public interest (or, more accurately, a weighted sum of the polls and the lobbyists) is what drives the congress. NASA has always known that. Look at the games they played in the early '60s with the Astronaut PR tours. That was NASA, not congress, doing that. As far as Nasa quashing private business... they held a total monopoly on space launches until the Challenger disaster woke everyone up to how dependent the country was on one bureaucracy. You seem to have forgotten that. So private industry has only had 15 years to even get going, and it still has to compete with NASA and other government funded space launch outfits (Arianne, China, Russia). BTW... I have worked as a NASA consultant, my father has worked as a scientist with NASA for almost 40 years, and we both can tell you lots of experiences with their internal bureaucracy and how "wonderful" it is. Private business *could* do it better, if there were suitable incentives. Private business, today, is doing a lot of the work for NASA today, and always has been.
The only good weather is bad weather.